The rest of January

Celebrating our 9th anniversary

"I'm trying to read here, can you get off the phone please?"

Frosty

the rest north corolina

Ice skating on the base for the first time

Out side of the ice skating rink there was an outdoor exercise course and of course the kids saw a play ground. We had a lot of fun climbing the ropes!

Making cupcakes for Daddy's birthday with Aunt Sarah

Nick and I went out to Charlotte (left the kids with Aunt Sarah) for Nick's board exam. 
While Nick was busy taking his test I went and explored the city. It was a really beautiful, and clean city. I window shopped, and went to the Levine Museum of the New South, and the Mint Museum of Art. I had such a wonderful relaxing day. 

Skyler took us on a tour of the base. He showed us where they go to practice jumping out of planes and he also took us the the JFK Special Warfare Museum that is on Fort Bragg. It was such an awesome museum and I feel sorry for everyone who doesn't have a chance to go.

"The Chinese are coming" I have no idea where that came from.

We discovered that our kids travel way better during the day. They were such troopers during the long drive back.

New Years in North Carolina

Nick has to take the third part of his board exam in North Carolina, so we decided to make it a family affair. The drive to Skyler and Sarah at Fort Bragg is about 14 hours door to door, luckily for us the Jones' live 6 hours into the drive. We visited them last year around the same time and had a blast, so we were excited to be able to spend some quality (although very short) time with them.

We left at bed time Thursday night, had some not so fun adventures with the rental car and finally made it to them around 1 in the morning. We spent all of Friday hanging out, everyone was still home for the holidays so Nick got to spend time with his cousins, which I know he enjoyed. After an awesome dinner we got on the road again, this time only making it about 4 hours before screams coming from the back seat got us to pull over for the night.

We finally made it to Skyler and Sarah on Saturday just in time for lunch. The next day they took us to the Airborne and Special Operations Museum, it was really cool and you could tell Skyler was having a blast showing us everything. The next nigh was New Years Eve, Sarah had found family friendly activity to do in a neighboring town and Andrew was so excited to be going to a party.

Southern Pines is the perfect town. I would move there tomorrow if I could.  The town shuts down the main streets in the downtown, and have a mock count down of a ball of pine cones spray painted sliver at 8pm. There was a magician, a couple of bands, face painting, yummy BBQ, games and more. We all had a blast, and the best thing about it was that we were able to go home put the kids down and celebrate with Oliebollen and skype with Debi and Martin while watching a very comical Martin approaching to use his juicer he got for Christmas.